Xanthia lifted one eyebrow. "What about you?"

Mr. Kemble gave a theatrical sigh. "Well, it is like this, my dear. Max has caught me in something of"-here, he paused to lay a finger aside his cheek-"well, let us call it a little indiscretion. A sort of affaire d'amour, as it were. An unnatural attachment that is just-well, a tad illicit. And it is the very sort of thing a man in my position should not wish to have made public."

Xanthia lifted both eyebrows, then suddenly, his intimation struck her. "Oh. Oh, dear." She cleared her throat decorously. "I cannot think that is anyone's business but yours, sir. And, of course, the-the-well, the person with whom-oh, good Lord! Never mind. What has any of this to do with me?"

"Max is blackmailing me."

It took a moment for his words to sink in. "But that is quite outrageous!"

"So it is, Miss Neville," he replied. "But I beg you to think of me. If you turn me off, why, Max will think it my doing. He will say I did not make an earnest attempt. That I failed to impress you with my dedication and my diligence."

Xanthia looked at him suspiciously. "I somehow imagined the two of you were friends."

"My dear, nothing could be further from the truth!" said Mr. Kemble, with a little toss of his hand. "Sadly, Max has no friends. He is a singularly grim, humorless, and unaffectionate man who thinks only of himself and his precious Home Office."

"Oh, I do not for one moment believe that."

Kemble smiled, and folded his hands together on one knee. "Well, it was worth a try, was it not?" he said lightly. "Come now, Miss Neville-what harm will it do if I dog your footsteps for a fortnight or so? Perhaps you will even find me of some use. I am, if I do say so myself, a man of many talents."

Xanthia did not doubt that. And he was entertaining, in a flamboyant and faintly dangerous sort of way. Indeed, there was an unmistakably dark edge to his personality, but at least he was not dull.

"Very well," she finally said. "You may accompany me to Wapping each day, and we shall make a little place for you in the office. Are you a very organized person?"

"Frightfully so."

"Excellent," said Xanthia. "I've a vast storage room filled with logs and manifests from Bridgetown which need indexing and filing. But I shan't need you otherwise, Mr. Kemble, particularly here, where I have my brother to...to safeguard me-which is an utterly silly notion anyway. And I certainly shan't be wearing this clumsy pistol strapped to my leg."

"But my dear, you should," he averred. "A lady ought never go past Temple Bar unarmed. Particularly a lady in your line of work and given the a.s.signment you have undertaken. Lord Nash is believed to be a very dangerous man."

"Oh, of that I am quite certain," Xanthia murmured. "But I am not at all sure he is a traitor."

"The Home Office is quite sure he is," said Kemble. "And they mean to see him in prison."

"Without first having the truth?" said Xanthia archly. "Why do I begin to believe you people have already tried and sentenced Lord Nash? I am happy to help, Mr. Kemble, when it is in my company's best interests to do so, but I won't be a part of a mockery of justice-not at any cost. Do I make myself plain?"

"Quite plain." Kemble looked vaguely contrite. "And perhaps you are right."

"I think I am," she said. "But if I am wrong-if Nash is behind this-we will know it soon enough."

Mr. Kemble smiled and folded his hands neatly together. "And until then, wear the pistol anyway, my dear," he pressed. "After all, a lady can never have too many silver accessories."

She deliberately lifted one eyebrow. "Yes, and what if Lord Nash should happen across it?" she murmured. "Accidents do happen."

Mr. Kemble gave a slow, wicked grin. "In your reticule, then?" he suggested. "But you'll need quite a large one."

"That is a more practical notion." Xanthia pursed her lips again. "Very well. I shall do it."

Mr. Kemble unfolded his hands, and smiled triumphantly.

Following the debacle at Lady Henslow's picnic, Lord Nash went home with every intention of dining in, and staying in-to privately lick his wounds or his claw marks or whatever it was Miss Xanthia Neville had sunk into him. Her very presence left a d.a.m.nable itch, one which he couldn't seem to scratch, a bone-deep frustration as vexing as it was foreign.

He was expecting Tony for dinner, but his brother did not appear. So he ate alone, silently chewing on his own frustration, and washing it down with a bottle of Hungarian bikaver-bull's blood, a wine stiff enough to peel the paint off the dining room walls.

It was not enough. He roamed the house like a wraith. Poked through the library shelves. Practiced vingt-et-un until his eyes crossed. Soon his restlessness drove him into the dark streets again, and he found himself halfway to Berkeley Square before he realized what he was about. He stopped abruptly on the pavement, his greatcoat swirling around his ankles in the evening's leaden mist.

What good would it do him to go there? What did he mean to do when he arrived? Stand in the street and gaze up at the woman's windows like some besotted lunatic?

No. No, the price for that was too high. He would take instead what he had already paid for. And he was not besotted; he was just...maddeningly intrigued. Yes, that was the word. With that decided, he strode off in the direction of Covent Garden. He would find physical satisfaction in Lisette's bed, as he had done a hundred times before. And if that did not work, he would go to Mother Lucy's, and ask for a willowy brunette with bottomless blue eyes. He would ask her for-well, not for anything especially unusual, though some of Lucy's girls could satisfy the most depraved of appet.i.tes. Nash was not interested in depravity. All he wanted was a few hours' peace in someone's arms.

But it was not to be Lisette's. Not if he wished for peace. He was well into his second gla.s.s of vodka by the time she arrived home from the theater, her eyes alight with barely veiled indignation. "Why, fancy seeing you here!" she said, tossing her cloak at the cowering butler.

Nash looked up from his gla.s.s. "You are late, Lisette."

The actress shrugged and went to the mahogany bureau. Lisette might be indignant, but she knew on which side her bread was really b.u.t.tered-and it was not at Drury Lane. "I did not expect you, darling," she said, pulling the pins from her hat. "Your habits have changed of late."

"But I pay you to be here."

"No, my dear, you pay me to f.u.c.k you." She shook out her ice blond hair, eyeing his reflection in the mirror. "But there was a little apres-theater soiree at Millie Dow's. Had I seen you at all, perhaps I would have invited you."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed his drink and stood. "Come upstairs when you have finished primping."

"Yes, I wish always to look my best for you, Nash." Her eyes followed him in the mirror. "Why do you not take up the madeira as you go?"

"I don't care for any," he said.

"Well, I do," she said. "So take a gla.s.s as well, if you please."

There was just one gla.s.s left on the tray. Nash s.n.a.t.c.hed it and the decanter, then stomped up the steps alone. Once upstairs, he set them on Lisette's night table and slowly began to undress.

When at last she slid naked beneath the covers, he took her fiercely, thrusting deep on the first stroke, and driving himself almost madly into her, in some futile effort to push away his demons. Lisette responded-she was, after all, an actress. But in truth, she had always liked it this way. It was, perhaps, what had first drawn them together. The need to spend their frustrations and their bodies. The hunger for s.e.xual satisfaction-but without intimacy.

There had been a time, he admitted, when this had been all he had wanted. Surely it still was? He had simply tired of Lisette, that was all. And at the moment, he had tired of this performance, too. Lisette looked up at him through somnolent eyes, her red mouth half open and gasping. It felt so...insufficient. It was as if he watched them thrusting and panting and reaching for one another from a distance, and through someone else's eyes. Someone detached. Pa.s.sionless.

Nash watched Lisette stiffen and tremble beneath him, then he finished mechanically, pulling himself from her body at the last possible instant, allowing his seed to spill across her milk white thighs. It was perhaps the blandest, most mundane performance of his lifetime. Lisette smiled lazily up at him, but he could sense her discontent. Perhaps she had simply feigned satisfaction. Indeed, perhaps she had been doing so for a long time now. What a harrowing thought that was. By remaining in this farce of an affaire, had he simply been making both of them miserable?

There came a time, he knew, in every s.e.xual liaison, when things either shifted to something deeper, or they did not. And once that point was reached, the days and months which followed would bring nothing but resentment and recrimination. Nash did not want anything deeper, and the resentment-well, its taste was already old and bitter. Yes, with Lisette-as with every other lover he had ever taken-the time had come.

After catching his breath, he rolled to one side and dragged an arm over his eyes to shut out the feeble lamplight. Lisette did not turn down the wick as was her habit, but instead sat up a little in bed, her weight shifting on the mattress. For a long, expectant moment, there was nothing but the sound of his breathing in the room.

"Did you play tonight?" she finally asked. "Was it...grim?"

"No," he said. "I stayed home."

The truth was, he had not sat down at a card table in days. He had not been to White's, nor to any of the more nefarious h.e.l.ls he frequented-places crawling with sharks and blacklegs of every ilk. Places which ordinarily would not have given him pause. But of late he'd had no taste for the sport-and he knew better than to gamble when his edge was off. Sharpers were naught but carnivores; they cut the weak from the crowd, and gutted them. None knew this better than he.

"I used to know, Nash, when you came to bed whether you had won or lost." Her voice held a hard edge. "Tonight you f.u.c.ked me as if you had lost."

"Lisette, for G.o.d's sake," he grunted. "Not tonight."

"Am I wrong, Nash," she finally said, "in thinking you have tired of my favors?"

He could hear her picking at the coverlet with her fingernail, almost as a child might pick at a scab. She meant to make them both bleed. He could feel it. And peace meant to elude him yet again. Well, perhaps he deserved no better.

Resigned to his fate, Nash rolled from the bed and went to the window, which overlooked Henrietta Street. He braced his hands wide on the window frame, and stared out into the night. The bells of St. Paul's were tolling the hour, sounding as if they were swathed in cottonwool. The fog had rolled in so cold and so dense, one could probably swim through Covent Garden, and the streetlamps seemed no more than oily yellow smears.

"Nash, I have been thinking," said Lisette from behind him. "We...we could have another girl again, could we not? Just for a while. Helen Manders has enormous b.r.e.a.s.t.s-and not a scruple to her name, so far as bed sport goes."

Nash had thrown up the window, and was drawing the cool, acrid air into his lungs in some hope that it would clear his mind. "I do not think so, Lisette."

"But she is playing t.i.tania this run," Lisette cajoled. "Perhaps she would even wear her costume. She looks very fetching as a fairy, I do a.s.sure you."

"No, not Helen," he said. "She is not the answer."

"Then another man, Nash, if you wish," she suggested, her voice low and seductive. "Would you like that? Would you? I could be a very bad girl, and afterwards-why, you could punish me. What of Tony? He is very handsome. I should fancy a go at him, I think."

He whirled about at the window, disgusted by her suggestions. "Good Lord, don't bring Tony into this," he snapped. "The man has trouble enough as it is-and a wife, too, I would remind you."

Lisette rolled her eyes. "Oh, G.o.d, Nash!" she said. "Must you be so frightfully conventional? I do not care if he has a wife-and I can a.s.sure you that he does not care. Not if all I hear is true."

"Well, he b.l.o.o.d.y well ought to care," said Nash. "Why? What have you heard?"

Lisette smiled up at him from the bed. "Come back to bed, Nash," she purred. "Come back and let me have you again, hmm? This time, the way I like it. And then perhaps I'll answer your question."

Nash turned back again, and dragged a hand through his hair. "No, I...I have to go, Lisette."

"Nash!" she chided. "It is three in the morning."

"I have to go," he muttered, s.n.a.t.c.hing up his shirt.

Lisette crushed her fists into the bedcovers. "d.a.m.n it, Nash!" she said. "I grow weary of this...this lackl.u.s.ter, halfhearted affaire."

"My apologies," he managed, shaking the wrinkles from his coat. "You are perfectly right."

"Nash, it is like this," she began, her voice now edged with anger. "I have had enough. And, I suspect, you have, too. I am leaving you for Lord Cuthert. Do you hear me? I am perfectly serious."

Nash was nodding as he drew on his trousers. "Cuthert, yes," he muttered. "By all means."

"And I shall be out by tomorrow, Nash," she screeched, "if you don't say something which will make me wish to stay!"

Nash shoved his arms through his waistcoat and looked at her blankly. "He's a nice chap, Cuthert-isn't he?" he answered. "I shouldn't wish you unhappy, Lisette. I just-well, I just wish you out of my life. And I out of yours, of course."

Honesty, it seemed, was not the best policy. Lisette's expression stiffened to one of utter rage. "Oh, G.o.d, how I hate you!" she shrieked, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the decanter of red wine. "I hate you utterly! Completely!"

Her aim was true, but at that very instant, Nash had knelt to find his stockings. The spray of shattering gla.s.s just above his head brought him up again. He looked over his shoulder to see the madeira running bloodred down the ivory silk walls.

He stared at the mess in stupefaction for a moment. "Didn't that decanter match the goblets you broke last week?" he finally asked.

"Yes," she hissed, sending the last gla.s.s crashing into the mirror. "And look! Now you've a matched set!"

Chapter Six.

A Sultry Afternoon in Wapping It was just a short visit to the new St. Katharine's Docks, Xanthia had decided. A little stroll upriver, not even half a mile. Modern times were coming to Wapping, by way of improved cranes, deeper basins, and expansive, well-lit warehousing. And Neville Shipping, Xanthia had vowed, was to be at the vanguard. With that logic, three months earlier she had plunked down a king's ransom in a preconstruction leasing arrangement for twelve thousand square feet of warehouse s.p.a.ce. The negotiations had been long and hard, but the deal had at last been struck. Today had been her first opportunity to inspect the progress of the construction.

Mr. Kemble, of course, had protested her going. But there was nothing as yet which Xanthia required protection from, and she told him so. So she left him in the upstairs office with a crate of old manifests, which had been dumped beside the extra desk Mr. Bakely had found for him, then she went downstairs to find Gareth Lloyd. They could not have been away more than two hours, she would have sworn, but the moment they stepped from Wapping High Street back into Neville's dim, dingy counting house, everything had gone topsy-turvy. The first hint was the sour, chalky smell which a.s.sailed her nostrils.

"Good G.o.d," said Lloyd. His feet were frozen to the threshold as his eyes roamed the room.

Beside him, Xanthia could only stare. Their six clerks were cowering in one corner. Mr. Bakely rushed forward, wringing his hands, his gla.s.ses hanging off the tip of his nose. "I tried to stop him, Miss Neville," he said in a low, wretched voice. "I told him it just would not do! But he wouldn't hear of it!"

Xanthia stepped farther into the room. "Mr. George," she began, using the name they had agreed upon. "What, pray, is the meaning of this...this disorder in my counting house?"

In the distant corner, Kemble's head whipped around, and his face lit with pleasure. He swished his way around the clump of desks and cabinets. "I call it pale melon," he said almost gleefully. "The d.u.c.h.ess of Devonshire painted her drawing room in it last spring-she is thought all the rage, you know-and now it is all the rage in Mayfair."

Gareth Lloyd was still staring at the two workmen on ladders who were slathering the wall with a pinkish orange paint. Three of the tall desks had been covered in paint-spattered Holland-cloth, and the others shoved to one side, leaving the clerks looking like sheep cornered in a pen. At the back windows, another pair of men dressed in stiff black suits were unrolling bolts of vivid fabric and holding them up to the windows in animated discussion about color and contrast.

"That's Phillipe and his a.s.sistant," said Kemble. "From the mercer's over in Fenchurch. After all, why pay Bond Street prices? I mean, it is just a counting house."

"Indeed, Mr. George, this is just a counting house," Xanthia echoed angrily. "And one which lives and dies by its profit and loss statement each month. We cannot possibly justify such an expense."

Mr. Kemble seemed to draw himself up three inches. "Madam, everyone must decorate!" he p.r.o.nounced. "Ugliness is so depressing. So tiring. How can these people be expected to work under such conditions?"

Just then, a loud fist sounded on the open door behind Xanthia. "Oy, Georgie!" cried the caller from the doorstep. "We're 'ere wiv 'is green carpet. Wot yer want done wiv it?"

"It is called summer celery, Mr. Hamm!" Kemble called through the door.

Xanthia turned to see two burly men outside, and a dray cart in the street beyond. "A-a carpet?" she managed.

Mr. Kemble gave her a doting smile, and lightly patted her arm. "Do not fret, dear girl," he whispered. "My friend Max will pay for this. And then the place will look so much brighter, will it not? So much more inviting, and-dare I say it?-yes, cheerful. And cheer is so important in one's daily surroundings, do you not think?"

"I..." Xanthia swallowed hard. "I am sure I do not know."

Gareth Lloyd was surveying the situation with obvious disgust. "Well, I can tell you what I should like to know," he grumbled. "I should like to know what kind of-of personal secretary calls his employer 'dear girl.' And I would venture to say further, Mr. George, that you are about to find yourself unemployed-though why you were ever hired to begin with is quite beyond me."

Lloyd vanished up the stairs, his feet thundering on the steps. He had been opposed to Kemble's presence from the outset and clearly thought Xanthia had lost her mind.

Kemble just smiled and patted Xanthia again. "My dear, is your Mr. Lloyd always this testy? Oh, never mind! I am sure he'll come round-especially when he sees the lavender silk moire I'm going to hang upstairs."

Just then, another knock sounded.

"Good Lord, what now?" Xanthia spun around again.